i oven cleaned a cinelli stem that was this weird faded black.. it worked pretty well.. but the best i could get it to is a spotty dull metal.. its begging for some kind of polishing.. but i don't know what.. anybody know what the next step is?

Hit it with a buffing wheel.

Also read this maybe? https://fixedgeargallery.com/articles/polishing/

cool article.. thanks.. that dude could prob. make a business silverizing threadless stems.. the options for non-black suck

who wants to lend me their bufffing wheel for a few minutes?

Some fine grade steel wool works well too.

cool article.
I actually found some decent silver stems...but might try that on a seatpost

Nitto makes a silver threadless stem that is probably the only threadless stem I thought looked good

they make aluminum polish for MAG wheels. any auto supply store should have it pretty cheap. i used mother's brand and have no complaints.

oven cleaner or lye should do the trick.

Yup, lye. Wash twice and polish once, let the chemical do the work for you. Buffing with rouge will give you a better and longer-lasting shine than steel wool.

rouge? wassthat?

this red polishing compound. When the guy here does a lot of polishing, his entire body, head to tow is covered in rouge. Than again, he'd do a lot of pieces and used a big buffing wheel.

If you go to that link from FGG that 128 put up, you'll see he uses a buffing wheel and what looks like a big a** crayon. That's polishing rouge, it's basically a stick of buffing compound. You can get a grinder motor, a buffing wheel, and some of that stuff for like $30. Throw in a wire wheel and you can make anything shiny with way less effort than other methods. Be warned that it will cover your floor and table in red crap that gets in everything, so do it in the garage or the alley.

Hot Tip: toothpaste is a decent polishing compound -- I use it to buff plastic crap like safety goggles and cell phone screen covers all the time. Just rub it with your fingers. Probably won't do crap for metal, and doesn't leave a mirror surface, but it's great for knocking down big scratches and getting a little more mileage out of stuff.